India ranks 119 on human development index

NEW DELHI: Rapid economic growth of the past decade has ensured India a place among the top 10 movers on GDP growth, but the country ranks a low 119 among 169 countries on the 2010 Human Development Index. China has been ranked much higher at 89 on the index published annually by the United Nations Development Programme.

And the reasons should be obvious. India compares very poorly with countries with high level of human development on all indicators such as life expectancy, education and per capita income. For instance, life expectancy at birth is 64.4 years in India.

In comparison, people living in countries such as Norway, Australia, New Zealand and many countries across Europe are expected to live beyond 80 years. The world average is 69.3 years. The Chinese are expected to live about 73.5 years. Similarly, the number of years a person has spent in school is a dismal 4.4 years for India as compared to global average of 7.4 and 4.6 for South Asia.

The only bright spot here is the mean years of schooling children are expected to complete. The HDI 2010 pegs that at 10.3 years, which compares reasonably well with world average of 12.3 years. However, in the rich nations represented by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development ( OECD) group that number is a high 15.9 years.

Lastly, the gross national income (GNI) per capita measured on purchasing power parity terms for Indian was less than a third of the world average at $3,337 in 2008. Now that does not mean that India has not made much progress on each of these indicators.

Over 30 years beginning 1980, India's HDI values has increased from 0.320 to 0.519, an increase of 62%. In the same period, life expectancy at birth increased almost 9%, mean years of schooling by close to three years, and expected years of schooling by four years and per capita GNI by 254%.

Yet India is a laggard, as many others have moved faster on the measured indicators, some more rapidly on non-income ones while others such as China and many south east Asian nations on income indicators.

At the global level, the HDI tell a optimistic story, the report noted. "Overall, poor countries are catching up with the rich countries... the HDI gap between developing and developed countries narrowed by about a fifth between 1990 and 2010 and about a fourth since 1970," it said.

The latest Human Development Report (HDR) has also tried to look deeper into the indicators to establish various inequalities. These inequalities arise due to disparity in distribution of incomes, gender inequality and mutli-dimensional poverty. Thus, India's score could fall by a steep 30% due to multi-dimensional inequalities, HDR 2010 notes.

High prevalence of gender inequality too could pull down India's rank on HDI as would multi-dimensional poverty. As much as 55% of the population suffer multiple deprivations while an additional 16% are vulnerable to multiple deprivations, according to the report. The breadth of deprivation in India, which is the average percentage of deprivation experienced by people in multi-dimensional poverty is 54%.